


Perdition City

by ParanoidPedant



Category: Sherlock (TV), Sherlock Holmes & Related Fandoms
Genre: AU, Alternate Universe - Noir, Case Fic, Detective Noir
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-08-31
Updated: 2014-09-10
Packaged: 2018-02-15 13:54:43
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 3,227
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2231544
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ParanoidPedant/pseuds/ParanoidPedant
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Noir-inspired AU; alternate meeting & case fic. After a failed suicide attempt, John Watson finds himself in the apartment of a man who calls himself a consulting detective.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

“Fuck.”

I opened my eyes.

That was my first indication that something had got fucked up. I wasn't supposed to wake up. Or, if I did, I was supposed to be in a white robe surrounded by clouds or something. Maybe, if there really was a god, my dog Blue would be there. Or maybe I'd go to the other place. I didn't believe in Heaven, not really, anyway. But I'd almost hoped that there would be a Hell. That I'd wake up, and Satan would clap me on the back and say, “Welcome home, sinner.” Maybe if there was a Hell that would mean there was some kind of justice after all, crime doesn't pay and bad people really are punished. After some of the shit I'd seen, I almost wanted to believe. But in my line of business it just seemed too good to be true.

“You're finally awake.” I heard a voice to my left, roused by my all-purpose salutation. It was a man. Or an elf, maybe, I couldn't really tell. He had these bright eyes and this high collar and he looked positively other-worldly sitting in the shadows in a battered old armchair. His voice was deep and smooth but it had a dangerous edge to it, like he'd seen the battlefield. But he didn't look military. I'd never seen him before and for a split second it occurred to me that I should be scared that there was a strange man watching me sleep, but then I realized that I didn't give a fuck. 

“Is this Hell?” I asked. Hope springs eternal.

“I don't think so.”

“Are you the devil?”

“Not quite.”

I groaned. “What happened?”

“You tried to kill yourself but apparently you were too drunk to do it properly. You tried to jump in front of the taxi I was in, fell into the gutter instead, then promptly passed out in front of my flat.”

“Oh.”

“Indeed.”

Silence filled the apartment, but it was a comfortable silence, like it belonged there. Companionable, I would have said, if that were the kind of thing that I would say, or if I had companions. But I didn't, not really, and that brought me back to how I'd gotten here. Which I couldn't remember at all. The last thing I could remember was filling a coffee mug with liquor and tossing an ice cube in it as a mixer. Or maybe I had skipped the ice cube. It was all sort of hazy.

“Wait,” I said, my brain catching up slowly. “How did you know I didn't just trip and fall in front of the taxi? How did you know I was trying to commit suicide?”

“Based on the amount of alcohol I determined you'd had, I can tell you know your way around a bottle. But you're not usually a heavy drinker, probably because your father was an alcoholic and your sister, too, so you don't drink very often but when you do, you do to excess. The suicide bit was easy. I know that you're an army doctor recently returned from Afghanistan. You're living out of a suitcase in a shitty motel and you haven't had a girlfriend in eighteen months. You go to the library every day and tell yourself you're looking for work but really you're looking for porn. So, you drank more than you meant to, formulated a half-baked scheme to kill yourself, and did a half-pirouette into traffic. Accident? Sad sack like you? No, could only be suicide.”

“You're just guessing,” I protested, but it sounded feeble even to me.

“There was a note,” he said dryly and pulled it out of his coat pocket. Just to drive his point home, he looked me right in the eye as he recited it: “'Fuck this, Fuck you, Fuck me.'”

Okay, so he had me there. And he wasn't wrong. Well, actually, he was wrong, and I was damned if I was going to just sit by and watch him dismantle me like that.

“You're wrong,” I said, gathering the shreds of what used to be my dignity.

“Oh?”

“Yeah. I formulated the half-baked suicide plan, and then got drunk.”

“Ah,” he pretended to be corrected. “Of course. So, you got smashed, wrote a note, then somehow stumbled your way in front of a taxi."

“Was I injured?” I glanced down at my arms and legs, as though I would see broken limbs that I hadn't felt yet. “How did the taxi do?”

“It was parked.”

I nodded sagely. I felt like I'd finally reached a critical mass of shame and no more was forthcoming, so I decided to get down to business. 

“What have you got to drink around here?” I said, voice rough. “I feel like I swallowed a fucking hornet's nest.”

“Worse than that,” the stranger replied. “Southern Comfort. Here, drink this.”

He handed me a glass of water and I drank it like some kind of health nut who drinks plain water. My head was pounding but I was starting to feel human again, and I was curious about my strange new acquaintance who already seemed to know so much about me.

“How the fuck did you know all that stuff, anyway?” I asked, half terrified of the answer. Maybe he was some kind of creepy stalker and he had kidnapped me to complete his sick fantasy. Was he just waiting to turn my skin into a brand new meat suit? But then I realized that nobody could possibly give enough of a fuck about me to bother with that. I couldn't even find a woman to give me a pity hand-job, there was no way anyone would want to get all Silence of the Lambs on me. It was a comforting realization, in a way.

“I deduced it.” I could tell he was trying to be cool about it, but he was secretly dying to tell me. If I was being honest, I was dying to know.

“Deduced it?” There was something about him that I was drawn to, magnetically, or maybe tragically, like a moth to the flame. He looked like rough sex and cigarettes and fuck the police. Danger fairly radiated off him in waves. Or maybe it radiated to him, like one of those people who doesn't need to go looking for trouble because it always manages to find him first. Because he didn't look that tough to me. In fact, I was pretty sure I could take him in a fight if I had to. I tried to get a good look to see what I was up against, just in case. He was tall, so had me there, but lanky and lean, all limbs. His legs stretched out in front of him, impossibly long with shoes that looked like they used to be nice but neglect had taken its toll. Under his crumpled suit jacket I could tell he had fairly narrow shoulders. Big hands though, and they looked pretty strong actually. I thought he could probably hold his own if it came to it. But as I really looked at him for the first time, what caught me was his face. It was surprisingly youthful, soft, even. He looked almost boyish with his dark curls and his full lips that pulled easily into a sarcastic smile as he spoke, which I realized he'd been doing.

“... which clearly hasn't been laundered in days, so it's most likely your only one.” There was this triumphant look in his eyes. “And your pants are yellow with aging cum stains.” He just sort of tacked that on at the end there.

“That could be from anything,” I mumbled reflexively. But I managed to recover, embarrassment giving way to amazement. “You got all that just from looking at me?”

He nodded with a satisfied look on his face. “Plus, I went through your wallet.”

“I'll bet that was disappointing,” I said. He tossed it at me. I opened it up to make sure it was still intact, and, sure enough, there was still two pounds-twenty in there, as well as a condom so ancient that I thought I heard it crumble as I inspected it, as he must have done the night before to assess the state of my nonexistent sex life. He'd learned all that about me just by looking at me and digging through my stuff. It was amazing. He was clearly brilliant, and probably bat-shit crazy.

“Seriously, though, how did you know all that?” I asked him again. It felt like asking a magician to reveal his tricks, and he basically acted like it was, too.

“I didn't know it,” he sniffed. “I observed. I'm a consulting detective, the only one in the world. I invented the job.” I didn't think that was strictly true but he seemed pretty set on it. “I also know that you're looking for work but you're scared that you're too fucked up to work with normal people again. You worry that the war broke you, but you worry more still that you like it that way. You have bad dreams every night but when you wake up the real nightmare starts and you can't believe that you'll ever feel alive again without it. You need something you can't find because not only do you not know what to look for, you don't even know that you're looking for it.”

“Alright,” I said. I'd heard enough. “Who the hell are you? And where am I?”

“The name is Sherlock Holmes, and the address is 221B Baker Street.”


	2. The Game is On

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A District Attorney candidate has been assassinated by a suspect claiming to have total memory loss. Detective Inspector Lestrade asks Sherlock Holmes to investigate.

His name was Sherlock Holmes, and he was a consulting detective.

“What does that even mean?” I had to ask.

“It means that when the police can't be fucked to do something themselves, which is always, they call me.”

I had a feeling there was more to it than that. By the look on my face I guess he could tell that, too.

“So,” he started explaining. “Take this case I just got, for example. Guy shows up in the psych ward, says he can’t remember anything at all, but he has this tattoo on his arm that he obviously got within the last week and the blood of a small-time politico on his hands. The police think it's a gang tattoo and that he's just bullshitting them to establish an insanity defense, but it's actually a cult tattoo put on him against his will.”

I was going from intrigued to incredulous, but just then I heard a knock at the door.

“Enter,” he shouted, not bothering to get up.

A guy came in, forties maybe, had “cop” written all over him, but he looked alright. There was a folder in his hands and a frown on his face that morphed into something else when he saw me. Confusion, I would have said. To be honest, I was sort of confused about what I was doing there, too. But we both got over it.

“Detective Inspector Lestrade,” Holmes greeted him. “What have you got for me?” Holmes tossed a smile at me, like I was about to be let in on a joke.

“Some guy checked into the psych ward yesterday, says he can’t remember shit but he has evidence linking him to the death of a promising District Attorney candidate. We think it's gang related,” the cop explained. “Can you help us identify him?”

My mouth fell open. “Wait,” I said to Holmes. “Didn't you tell me you just got this case?”

“Yeah,” he replied. “Just now.”

If I was supposed to be impressed, I was. The cop, Lestrade, I guess his name was, just shrugged like he saw this sort of display all the time and handed the folder over to Holmes.

“It's not gang-related,” Holmes said right away, thumbing through the photos. There were several of the murder scene and a few of a guy in white scrubs who must have been their suspect. He looked like a working stiff to me, if a little rough. There were pictures of his several tattoos, mostly old and faded, but one new one, dark black, the skin still a little raw. 

“How can you be sure?” Lestrade asked.

“Because I know all the gang tattoos for this area and a great deal of the ones not from this area,” Holmes stated. I believed him, and it looked like the cop did, too. I was starting to get more of a feel for my host. He was confident, no doubt, but he didn't seem like the type to make an empty boast. There was no bullshit with this guy. 

“Who's the vic?” Holmes said.

“District Attorney hopeful Vincent Morrell. Running on a campaign of ending the corruption and cronyism of the city political machine,” the detective said in a tone that said even he knew the murder was practically a foregone conclusion.

“So, the list of people who wanted him dead can be narrowed down to ‘everyone with a vested interest in maintaining the status quo,’” Holmes observed. Now there was a depressing thought. “What do you need me for?”

“He won’t talk to the cops, says he can’t remember anything about the murder or even who he is. That’s all we can get out of him. But this guy did have Morrell’s blood on his hands, doesn’t that count for something?”

“The doctor who called it probably had this guy’s blood on his hands. Do you think he was in on it, too?”

“Cut the bullshit, Holmes. Did he kill Morrell?” Lestrade asked.

Holmes glared up at him. “How the fuck would I know that? It's deduction, not magic. I’d need to interview him and see all the evidence before I can tell you anything about the murder.”

“Well, can you at least tell me anything about the suspect?” the detective asked. “Anything to narrow down his identity? Morrell is dead and even if this guy didn’t do it he probably has family looking for him. Maybe they can tell us something if he won’t.”

“No family,” Holmes said, studying one of the pictures. “And he’s not a local. He was doing seasonal temp work at one of the docks but his contract just ended. No one to miss him.”

“What about the tattoo? Any idea what shop he got it from? Maybe we can start there.”

“He didn’t get it from around here,” Holmes said.

“How do you know that?”

“I recognize the type of ink. I wrote about the various types of tattoo ink on my website, if you'd ever bother to read it,” Holmes said, lips pursing slightly. Was he pouting? 

“Will you just come in?” Lestrade was practically begging, in a dignified, resigned sort of way.

“Fine,” Holmes said. “Until something more interesting comes along.” 

“Thank you,” Lestrade said, leaving the apartment. “I’ll see you there.”

As the door clicked shut my host sprang up from his chair, pacing around the room and rambling on about the photos in his hand.

“Brilliant!” he said. “Finally, something interesting is happening.”

“You going to clue me in?" I said. "How did you know about the tattoo?” 

He flopped down next to me, the outsides of our thighs pressing together as he waved the file in front of my face. I guess ‘personal space’ wasn't within his area of expertise.

“It was put on him against his will,” Holmes said. 

“How can you possibly know that?” I said.

“Look at the lateral border here,” he pointed to a little blip on the edge of the tattoo. “Jagged, sloppy. The rest of the line work is clean. He was probably sedated while they did it, but he woke up and struggled, marring the edge of the tattoo.”

“How did you know the guy had checked into a psych ward?” I said.

“I have connections on the inside,” Holmes said without elaborating. “She told me about our mystery man and managed to snap a picture of the tattoo with her phone.”

“How did she sneak a phone into the psych ward,” I wondered aloud.

“I didn’t ask.” 

I nodded. Best leave that one a mystery.

“How did he get the memory loss, then?”

“I’m not sure,” Holmes had this faraway look in his eyes, like he was seeing something I couldn’t see. “That’s what makes this all so interesting. The game is on!” 

With a burst of energy he hopped up off the couch and made for the door, wrapping a scarf around his neck with a flourish. When he got there, he turned around abruptly and stared at me as if just remembering I was still there.

I stared back, dumbstruck and feeling unaccountably bereft that he was leaving so suddenly. Of course he was leaving. What had I expected? He had a life and a job of sorts, and I was some guy who happened to pass out in front of his apartment he’d taken pity on. This was the part of the date where the woman would pull on her shoes, tell me she was going to work, there’s coffee in the cupboard, and could I lock the door when I left? I knew this routine, it had just taken me longer to recognize it. 

“There’s coffee in the freezer,” he said after a moment.

Jesus. Just in case there had been any doubt left in my mind. Stupid, I thought. Did I think that we had some kind of connection because I’d tried to kill myself on his cab? Of course not. Back to reality. Who would want a broken and suicidal army doctor for a friend, anyway?

“Okay, thank you,” I somehow choked it out. If my voice sounded a little rough it couldn't be helped. Thanks for saving my life, I guess? At the moment, I wasn't feeling particularly grateful. “What should I do?” I didn't know what else to say.

“You have to press the button on the top -” he started.

“No,” I said. “I mean, uh.” I swallowed hard, unable to complete my thought.

“Oh,” he got it. He gave me a quizzical look. “Aren't you coming with me?” He said it as though it were obvious and I was just slow on the uptake.

My head snapped up in disbelief. “Really?” I must have put a little too much into it though because he frowned at me, like my enthusiasm was making him uncomfortable. Then, almost as an afterthought I added, “We barely know each other.”

“I feel like I've gotten rather a lot of information about you.” 

I suppose that was a nice way of putting it. “I still don't know anything about you,” I said, but it was more because I was becoming fascinated with him, not because I harbored any reservations about him. He was a mystery to me, a puzzle I wanted to solve. 

“I’m a junkie who solves crimes and shoots cocaine,” he gave me a mischievous look. “I could use a good doctor for a second opinion and to keep me out of trouble.” I thought he was just being self-important. I realized later, much, much later, that he was flirting. Much later. He was out of practice, or I was. “I think that's enough to be going on. What do you say, Dr. Watson? You looking for trouble?”

“Oh god yes.”


End file.
